THE VARSITY
The University of Toronto’s Student Newspaper Since 1880
T HE VA RSI T Y
21 Sussex Avenue, Suite 306
Toronto, ON M5S 1J6 (416) 946-7600
thevarsity.ca thevarsitynewspaper @TheVarsity thevarsitypublications the.varsity The Varsity
Vol. CXLVI, No. 3 MASTHEAD
Medha Surajpal editor@thevarsity.ca
Editor-in-Chief
Chloe Weston creative@thevarsity.ca
Creative Director
Sophie Esther Ramsey managingexternal@thevarsity.ca
Managing Editor, External
Ozair Chaudhry managinginternal@thevarsity.ca
Managing Editor, Internal
Jake Takeuchi online@thevarsity.ca
Managing Online Editor
Nora Zolfaghari copy@thevarsity.ca
Senior Copy Editor
Callie Zhang deputysce@thevarsity.ca
Deputy Senior Copy Editor
Ella MacCormack news@thevarsity.ca
News Editor
Junia Alsinawi deputynews@thevarsity.ca
Deputy News Editor
Emma Dobrovnik assistantnews@thevarsity.ca
Assistant News Editor
Ahmed Hawamdeh opinion@thevarsity.ca
Opinion Editor
Medha Barath biz@thevarsity.ca
Business & Labour Editor
Shontia Sanders features@thevarsity.ca
Features Editor
Sofia Moniz arts@thevarsity.ca
Arts & Culture Editor
Ridhi Balani science@thevarsity.ca
Science Editor
Caroline Ho sports@thevarsity.ca
Sports Editor
Aksaamai Ormonbekova design@thevarsity.ca
Design Editor
Brennan Karunaratne design@thevarsity.ca
Design Editor
Kate Wang photos@thevarsity.ca
Simona Agostino illustration@thevarsity.ca
video@thevarsity.ca
emilyshen@thevarsity.ca
Emily
Obra sataphon.ob@gmail.com
utm@thevarsity.ca
utsc@thevarsity.ca
Molinaro grad@thevarsity.ca
publiceditor@thevarsity.ca
Cover: Chloe Weston. Photos courtesy of TIFF
The Varsity acknowledges that our office is built on the traditional territory of several First Nations, including the Huron-Wendat, the Petun First Nations, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit. Journalists have historically harmed Indigenous communities by overlooking their stories, contributing to stereotypes, and telling their stories without their input. Therefore, we make this acknowledgement as a starting point for our responsibility to tell those stories more accurately, critically, and in accordance with the wishes of Indigenous Peoples.
Jackman Humanities Building closed in response to Professor Ruth Marshall’s online comments
Professor on leave after tweet following Charlie Kirk shooting
Celesta Maniatogianni Varsity Contributor
U of T professor Ruth Marshall has been placed on leave following a comment she made on X after the assassination of prominent conservative activist Charlie Kirk last Wednesday.
The Jackman Humanities Building — where Marshall’s office is located — was temporarily closed last Thursday and Friday. Classes in the building were cancelled, relocated, or moved online after the university acted out of “an abundance of caution following online comments.” Campus safety officers were stationed at the building during the closure.
The Toronto Police Service did not respond in time for publication when asked whether they had been notified of a threat to the building or any individual.
On her now-private X account, Marshall wrote: “Shooting is honestly too good for so
many of you fascist cunts.” The post appeared about an hour after US President Donald Trump announced on social media that Kirk had died.
In a statement sent to The Varsity, a university spokesperson wrote, “The University took immediate action upon learning of the concerning social media posts of a University of Toronto professor. The faculty member is now on leave and not on campus. The matter is being looked into and the University will not be commenting further.”
Marshall remains on leave as U of T continues its investigation. Her university webpages for the Departments of Religious Studies and Political Science have been taken down.
Marshall worked as an associate professor — a tenured position — and taught courses like JPR364 — Religion and Politics in the Nation State. She also served as an elected representative on U of T’s Faculty Association, and was the 2023 joint winner of the Canadian Associate of University Teachers Milner Memorial Award for academic freedom.
She was previously quoted in The Varsity as saying that U of T had a clear “doublestandard” when disciplining faculty for their social media conduct, particularly those supporting Palestine.
Marshall declined The Varsity’s request for comment.
UTGSU doubles GradFest orientation budget, citing high expected turnout
On June 23, the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union (UTGSU) doubled their upcoming graduate orientation, GradFest, budget to $85,650, anticipating greater attendance after last year’s unexpectedly high turnout. The budget now covers the costs for a new venue and increased expenses for catering, facilities, and overhead.
GradFest will now be held at Front Campus on September 16 from 4:00–8:00 pm.
To break down the budget and the event, The Varsity reached out to executive members Vice President (VP) Graduate Life Eliz Shimshek, VP Finance Farshad Murtada, and President Amir Moghadam. As the lead on the event, VP GradLife Shimshek emailed The Varsity on behalf of the entire team.
Budget
Every year, the UTGSU hosts GradFest in the fall and winter semesters to welcome new and returning graduate students to the university.
Last year’s fall GradFest budget projected 1,400 attendees, with 2,200 registering, including 1,200 on the last night of registration.
“The decision [to increase the budget] is easy because of our membership's engagement level,” Shimsek wrote.
To allocate expenses for food, bulk purchases, and logistics, the board must present a budget at a summer Board of Directors meeting, since GradFest occurs in the first month of the fiscal year, before UTGSU’s approval of a full 2025–2026 budget.
This year, in the early stages of outreach in July, over 200 students registered for GradFest. Shimshek explained that the majority of these budgetary decisions emerged from the high level
of engagement from last year, and remained proportional to attendance levels.
“[I]t’s no secret that we are seeing massive cuts in post-secondary education due to underfunding from the provincial government and continued austerity measures in the university,” Shimshek wrote to The Varsity, “At a time like this, it is important for students to see that their students’ union is not cutting corners and that we are investing in them.”
Location
This year, GradFest relocated from Bancroft Avenue — where the event has historically been held — to Front Campus. Last year’s largerthan-expected turnout led to space constraints and fewer amenities, including limited giveaways prepared by the union.
According to the June 2025 Budget explainer, Bancroft Avenue is no longer considered a viable or safe venue given the high anticipated turnout.
“The reality is that the road was not built for a 2500+ person event. We had hosted GradFest for so many years at Bancroft and we needed to reflect and understand that to host the event we wanted to, in a safe way, we needed a larger space,”
Shimshek wrote. “This means more student services and student groups, activities outside of just tables and a barbeque, and ultimately more students to engage with the UTGSU.”
Future considerations
UTGSU’s GradFest planning emerged from multi-year discussions on membership programs and graduate life engagement. Ahead of winter GradFest, “a much smaller operation” than its fall alternative, Shimshek identified UTGSU’s work to foster relationships with the MultiFaith Centre toward hosting indoor events and increased funding throughout the year for a “burst of programming.” In reference to fall GradFest, Shimshek wrote, “it is a great litmus test to show how many students want to engage in the campus experience.”
“In many ways, graduate studies is what you make of it,” Shimshek wrote. “We hope that GradFest shows our members that they can get involved outside of the classroom and department, that graduate life is thriving at UofT, and that there is an active students’ union willing to hear their ideas, engage with their needs, and treat them as more than a number.”
The Jackman Humanities Building was closed Thursday and Friday following response to Marshall’s tweet JUNIA ALSINAWI /THE VARSITY
Anticipating high turnout, UTGSU will host GradFest at Front Campus this year. JUNIA ALSINAWI /THE VARSITY
Trinity students win fight to restore gowns Academic gowns on lock after lockdown,
Devin Botar Varsity Contributor
After years of student pressure, academic gowns have been reintroduced to some Trinity College events. The first gowned event took place in April.
Gowns, like those worn during convocation, were once worn regularly at certain Trinity events until the COVID-19 pandemic paused all in-person gatherings. The Trinity administration decided not to revive gowned events after the lockdowns ended.
In 2023, students began to push for gowns to be reinstated, saying they served as a distinctive symbol of the college and built a sense of community.
The administration initially resisted the efforts to restore gowns, pointing to a past association between gowns and tradition-related scandals. One administrator claimed to students that the college had thrown out its old collection of gowns, but students from the Trinity College Meeting (TCM) found 300 gowns in excellent condition in the basement of Trinity.
This year, new appointees in Trinity’s administration engaged with students through public meetings, and in March, it was announced at a TCM meeting that gowned events would be returning to Trinity College.
Trinity College has not officially announced outside of the TCM that gowns have returned, but the discontinuation of gowns was also never officially announced.
Trinity’s traditions tumble Trinity once harboured a highly distinct student culture, with gowns as a defining feature. Students took part in a dense matrix of events, customs, and traditions, some of them sanctioned by the college, others maintained independently.
Most of those traditions are no longer kept up today. Some fell out of practice naturally, especially over the pandemic, while others were purposefully dismantled –– such as Episkopon, a student secret society founded at Trinity in 1858.
The secret society was an officially funded and recognized Trinity club until the college dissociated from it in 1992, after which point it operated independently. In June 2020, Episkopon announced its own dissolution amid intense public criticism. Students linked it to what they characterized as a broader culture of harassment, discrimination, and anti-Black racism at Trinity.
The backlash against Episkopon and the college prompted Trinity to form a task force on anti-Black racism and inclusion, which aimed to modernize the college practices and culture.
Isengard, turkey drop, and other Trinditions
One former tradition at Trinity is Isengard — named after the tower from The Lord of the Rings — was a recurring race to stack a tower of beer cans from out a common room window all the way up to the roof.
Another tradition was the “turkey drop,” where crowds would gather to watch a stuffed turkey drop out the window of Henderson Tower in celebration of Thanksgiving.
Trinity also used to hold weekly High Table dinners –– or just ‘High Tables’ –– in Strachan Hall with students and faculty, gowns required. These were the most iconic gowned events at Trinity, though gowns were also worn at assemblies of the TCM and at meetings of the Trinity College Literary Institute, a self-described “satirical debating society.”
A 2018 Varsity Op-Ed accused the dinners of perpetuating an “eerily feudal” hierarchy, because student tables were divided by academic year, and faculty sat on the slightly raised platform at the end of Strachan Hall.
One of the modernizing proposals made by Trinity’s anti-discrimination task force was to “realign High Table dinners to be welcoming and non-hierarchical community events.”
After pausing during the lockdowns, though, High Tables were never brought back.
returning after five years
Malcolm Standing, a Trinity student who first arrived at the college before the pandemic and has been highly involved in student life, explained in an email to The Varsity, “Gowns are most inextricably linked with the high tables, and since weekly high tables never returned I think it slowly became apparent that gowns themselves wouldn’t be coming back either… Perhaps the lower years couldn’t quite sense it, but the loss of [the] high table was something a lot of people in my year interpreted as a death knell for gowns returning in any capacity.”
The letter In December 2023, the students of the Trinity College Board of Stewards (TCBS) wrote an open letter calling on the college to reintroduce gowned events. The letter argued that Trinity’s gowns –– similar to the hard hats worn by engineering students –– served as a distinctive visual symbol of the college.
The letter argued that making gowns optional, subsidized, and available to borrow at the welcome desk would address any equity concerns. The letter also noted that members of Episkopon had used academic gowns ––specifically, gowns stained with candle wax –– at their events, but dismissed the association.
“The first year students asking for academic gowns are far more interested in Harry Potter cosplay than cult membership,” the students wrote.
“Maintenance issues”
In December 2023, TCBS student leaders met with an administrator to discuss the college’s policy on gowns.
The Varsity interviewed four students who were present at that meeting. According to Alexander Lawson, one of those administrators present, Cameron McBurney framed the reintroduction of gowns as a costly endeavour that would come at the expense of more substantive programming, like mental health support.
Lawson, Tristan Cullum, and Anna McIntosh told The Varsity that, at that meeting, McBurney claimed that Trinity’s old collection of gowns had been thrown out due to “maintenance issues.”
Lawson told The Varsity that McBurney made the same claim again at other meetings that year.
Cullum told The Varsity in an email that he and other student leaders later investigated and found that the college had roughly 300 gowns in excellent condition stored in a basement room of the Larkin building.
This description of events is corroborated by a TCM meeting minutes document from that year: “Has admin clarified whether or not they have the robes? Cam said no, Noor [Pannu, student Head of College] saw them in the basement.”
McBurney did not respond to The Varsity’s request for comment.
Steely town hall at Seeley Hall
In the 2025 student government elections at Trinity, the winning candidate for TCM Chair, both winning candidates for Head of College, and the winning candidate for Head of First Year all campaigned on reintroducing gowns.
Trinity College began the 2024–2025 school year with two new officials in the top ranks of its administration –– Nicholas Terpstra as Provost and Kevin O’Neill as Dean of Arts & Vice-Provost. In response to the calls for gowns to be reintroduced, they agreed to gather student feedback by holding a public meeting.
A town hall about the gowns was held in November, and moderated by Dean O’Neill. The Varsity sent a reporter to the meeting, which was held in Trinity’s Seeley Hall.
Every student who spoke was in favour of restoring gowns. One upper-year student who attended the town hall said it drew the largest crowd he had ever seen at a TCM meeting.
Students frequently shouted out interjections and jokes at the expense of the administration, drawing cheers from the crowd.
Dean O’Neill warned the students against adopting an “us versus them” mentality toward the administration. He tried to steer the discussion towards practical questions concerning the implementation of gowns.
One student said, “I’m not paying extra fees just to live in a building that has no events or anything else going on for it.” Another said that, “at this point, Trinity is just a residence.”
One student reported a widespread sense that the traditions like gowns were delayed “due to red tape that I feel a lot of people of the college think, rightly or wrongly, originates from administration.”
A different student said that “the administration has erased a lot of important traditions at Trinity… for example, the fact that Trin couldn’t go to chant off at the start of this [past] year, I thought that was utterly ridiculous.”
Trinity students were allowed to take part in the cheer-off this year after the college’s old chants –– some of which had been used for nearly a century and featured distinctive lines like “no new ideas shall ever come near to us!” –– were to be replaced by a slate of new chants with lines like, “who’s got the best moves? Trinions! Trinions!”
Many students used the old chants anyway.
The Trinity College Historical Society released a statement last August condemning the chant change, calling it a “needless blow to the unique character of the Trinity community,” and saying the decision had been made by “unelected appointees of the college administration, without due consultation with relevant stakeholders.”
Dean O’Neill described gowns as “an empty signifier,” meaning that they could be taken to represent to represent Trinity’s “history of poor behaviour,” but also that “you have the ability to write whatever you want onto it, and this idea that if you would put on a gown and then become a scholar of Trinity College, that’s inspiring.”
The town hall concluded with the decision that student leaders would put together a new proposal for the reintroduction of gowns, which would be presented to college leadership for consideration.
“Seize the welcome desk.”
The criticisms of the administration voiced at the town hall closely mirrored views that other Trinity students have expressed elsewhere.
Many similar grievances were expressed in the latest issue of Salterrae, Trinity’s student magazine. Salterrae went dormant after the pandemic and was revived only this year.
The “Reject Modernity, Embrace Trindition,” issue featured one article that accused the “ruthless” administration of having “seized upon every opportunity to make residence inhospitable to student life,” to reduce the liabilities incurred by a scandal-prone student culture.
A Trinity alum wrote in another Salterrae article, “I was genuinely disheartened to hear a large number of alumni and current students sharing with their friends and siblings who were thinking of attending Trinity to reconsider since “nothing happens at Trinity” anymore.”
Another Salterrae article claimed that in recent years, “as the Dean of Students’ Office ballooned in size and budget, so too did administrative hurdles for throwing events, starting a club, or doing anything that could be construed as ‘social.’”
Similar views also surfaced in the latest spring elections, when Trinity student Matt Pindera won an election for a mid-level position in the TCM off a tongue-in-cheek platform that lambasted the administration for “treating us as children,” and a pledge to “seize the welcome desk.”
Gowned gatherings get going
At a public meeting in January, TCM Chair Kaelem Moniz announced that Provost Terpstra had committed to the college covering the cost of reintroducing gowns. Finally, at a TCM meeting in March, it was announced gowned events would be returning to Trinity.
The first gowned event was the second annual Last Lecture, held in April.
At that TCM meeting in March, Terpstra said, “Myself and the dean of arts have been talking about how we can bring back a lot of the traditions of the college that have gone for many reasons. This is a minimum number of things, but there is no maximum.”
When asked about the future implementation of gowns, a Trinity College spokesperson wrote to The Varsity earlier this month that, “To ensure equity and access for all students, several factors, including vendors and costs, are currently under review for the procurement of academic gowns for use at academic events at the college. Trinity will be discussing options with student leaders over the coming months.”
Manager hired for previously closed Diabolos’ Coffee Bar at UC
The student-run café was closed since 2023, set to reopen this academic year
Celesta Maniatogianni Varsity Contributor
After two closures and challenges with unions, labour laws, and finances, Diabolos’ Coffee Bar — located in the Junior Common Room of University College (UC) — is officially set to reopen. UC Lit has hired a manager, and UC’s Coffee Bar Board is in the early stages of planning the café’s comeback, expected sometime this academic year.
Diabolos’ is a student-led café owned and operated by UC’s student government, the University College Literary and Athletics Society (UC Lit). First opened in 1966, Diabolos’ shut down at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. It briefly reopened in winter 2023 but closed again shortly after due to financial difficulties.
When it reopens, Diabolos’ will join Café Reznikoff and The Owlery Café as one of the three cafés on UC’s grounds — with the Owlery opening after Diabolos’ initial closure.
Reopening
According to UC Lit’s July Council meeting minutes, UC’s Coffee Bar Board had “been
meeting regularly” over the summer as they “continue[d] preparing for the Diabolos reopening.”
In August, UC Lit officially ratified and hired a manager and an alumni advisor for the café.
The manager, Raquel Lewin, previously managed Diabolos’ during its brief return in winter 2023. The alumni advisor, Clare Spikerman — a UC and Diabolos’ alum who now runs her own café — will provide guidance to the board.
In an email to The Varsity , Lewin confirmed that she would return as general manager of Diabolos, and noted that she and the Coffee Bar Board are still in the early stages of planning the café’s reopening.
Diabolos’ 2023 closure Diabolos’ closed shortly after its 2023 reopening due to financial struggles and complications with union and labour laws.
During a UC Lit meeting, Jared Boland, University College’s Assistant Dean of Students, Student Life & Leadership, said that Diabolos’ hiring through UC Lit had previously run into tax issues with the Canadian Revenue Agency
(CRA). As a result, the university took over Diabolos’ “human resourcing duties, including payroll, bargaining, onboarding and offboarding, reporting income to the CRA, and issuing tax paperwork,” wrote Boland in an email to the UC Lit. The manager position was classified as a work-study role, which allowed most of students’ pay to be largely subsidized by the government.
In winter 2023, however, U of T’s human resources determined that the positions could not be considered work-study because they closely resembled jobs held by members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE).
Under CUPE’s agreement, the university is
prohibited from creating jobs that unionized employees could fill.
During the university’s reevaluation of pay for casual and underemployed employees, it was discovered that under union frameworks, the manager role would need to be paid $48 an hour. The wage for Diabolos’ manager had not increased in years from $16 an hour.
UC Lit could not afford the wage increase and now risked a union grievance. The café shut down mid-semester, and has not returned since.
The manager role is now hired directly through the UC Lit rather than the university, meaning the position no longer violates union agreements.
U of T Work Study positions halved for 2025–2026
The Varsity breaks down what this means for the program and students
Junia Alsinawi Deputy News Editor
Beginning in the summer semester, the university has reduced the number of available work-study positions by half due to a drop in “external funding and carry forward [funding].” This year, the Work Study program offered 2,600 positions — a steep decline from the 5,000–6,000 opportunities available to students in previous years.
“These funds are no longer available”
A community letter released in May by U of T’s Work Study Governance Committee explained that the number of opportunities in previous years was due to external and carry forward funding — unspent funds from the previous budget — which “allowed for more positions to be approved.”
Work Study positions rely heavily on university funding, making the program particularly vulnerable to budget changes. Departmental employers cover only 30 per cent of the pay rate, while the remaining 70 per cent comes
from university funding. The student pay rate is set to rise from $17.20 to $17.60 per hour after Ontario’s minimum wage increase takes effect on October 1.
“These funds are no longer available,” the letter stated, calling the reduction a return to U of T’s “original” Work Study budget, and noted that it is “predicted to remain static for the next five budget years.”
As a result of this decreased funding, historically approved positions are no longer guaranteed. In past years, proposed Work Study positions had to be submitted for approval through a job review process. This year’s review process involved “a set of principles… leveraged to ensure equitable distribution of positions per the program budget allocation,” as outlined in the letter.
Equity considerations included proportional representation across campuses, balanced distribution across academic divisions, and alignment with the experiential learning goals of the Work Study Program.
Under the new budget, approximately 1,100 summer positions and 1,500 fall-winter positions were approved. By comparison, the letter noted
that previous years had offered “5000-6000+ student opportunities,” acknowledging that the now-limited program capacity meant “many worthy positions and valuable opportunities” were not approved.
Impact on students
“We recognize the significant impact this reduction has on students and the broader University community,” Work Study Governance wrote in the community letter. “We share in the concern about this impact.”
The letter makes clear that it is up to the affected departments and supervisors to “explore alternative strategies and plans.”
In the letter’s FAQ section, when addressing alternative ways to hire students and support experiential learning, Work Study Governance lists two resources: the U of T Co-op program and the Woodsworth College SEE U of T program.
Undergraduate students in the Co-op program are “strongly advised” not to take classes during work terms, whereas Work Study students must maintain a minimum course load of 0.5 Full
Course Equivalent (FCE) in the summer session and 2.0 FCE during the fall-winter session.
Woodsworth’s SEE U of T program is designed for Grade 11 and 12 Toronto District School Board students, and does not offer opportunities for undergraduate or graduate students.
The letter stated that Work Study Governance partners “are continuing to explore future administrative and financial pathways that could help create meaningful student opportunities and support hiring needs across the University.”
Following the reduction of available Work Study positions, members of the U of T community took to the university’s subreddit to discuss how the changes have impacted them.
“The prof I’ve been doing research with usually employs around 3-4 undergraduates every term to help out with lab chores and has done so for years, but starting this summer, that number was cut down to only 1 undergraduate,” user Educational-Food2764 posted.
“My work study boss this summer told me… he went from 7 in fall/winter and 3 this summer to 0 positions available,” wrote user ihatedougford.
SIMONA AGOSTINO/THEVARSITY
Diabolos’ Coffee Bar, located in the Junior Common Room of University College, is officially set to reopen. ELLA MACCORMACK/THE VARSITY
Arts & Culture
September 16, 2025
thevarsity.ca/section/arts-and-culture arts@thevarsity.ca
TIFF review: Two Prosecutors
Sergei Loznitsa explores the mundane betrayal of government bureaucracies
Someone asks a man what he was doing as a Bolshevik before the revolution in 1917. The man said that he was imprisoned. They then ask what he will do now after the revolution as a Bolshevik. The man replied that he’s on his way to prison.
This joke is told by the prison governor to the warden in Sergei Loznitsa’s historical drama, Two Prosecutors , which was recently featured in the Toronto International Film Festival’s (TIFF) 50th Anniversary lineup.
The joke elicits knee-slapping, belly-shaking laughter from the warden and the prison governor. But when the warden leaves, the prison governor’s face falls, and he turns to the camera with panicked dismay. This bleak horror and mundane betrayal is the tone of Loznitsa’s exploration of the bureaucratic machine of The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) during Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge in 1937.
In Franz Kafka’s novel, The Castle — one of the materials that the director drew on for this film — the castle is an exaggerated bureaucracy that claims to be a flawless, well-oiled machine. The reader eventually learns that if the bureaucratic machine did not have any flaws, the novel’s protagonist, K., a land surveyor, wouldn’t have been sent to investigate the place. Two Prosecutors has a similar conundrum.
The movie begins with a shot of a rust-red, heavy, metal prison gate that opens menacingly slowly, through which the film’s protagonist, 29-year-old Kornyev (Aleksandr Kuznetsov), a Soviet prosecutor only three months on the job, marches in with purpose. His task is to investigate a complaint from a prisoner that arrived at the prosecutor’s office. The problem is, all complaints are burned by the interned labourers on the orders of the prison warden.
Kornyev discovers that there is a corrupt scheme targeting old Bolshevik fighters and party members, and he tries to take the logical investigative steps to address this outrageous flaw in the bureaucratic system. Like K. in Kafka’s novel, however, he is faced with constant obstacles that delay, confuse, and sabotage his mission.
Loznitsa explores this comically frustrating tomfoolery of bureaucracies with a deft hand. The machine of bureaucracy functions in the same pedantic way in a lowly prison in the far northern city as it does in the high echelons of a government branch in Moscow.
Kornyev is faced by gatekeeper underlings in both settings. In the prison, the warden determines whether Kornyev gets to see the prison governor. In Moscow, the stern secretary of the prosecutor general is upset that Kornyev has made no appointment and has no travel papers, yet has the audacity to request a meeting despite his low rank.
If you do not know how the bureaucratic system works, it is not in its interest to guide
you. In the prison, Kornyev manages with his extensive legal knowledge and official papers. In Moscow, there are traps for him everywhere. He is unaware of the various spies gleaning information from him, or that the trust he places in the system to correct itself doesn’t function that way. One bureaucracy he has power over, and one puts him in a labyrinth.
We have the advantage of historical fact in knowing how things played out. Kornyev’s crime as a character is that he earnestly believes in the revolutionary ideals of his government.
In the question-and-answer session after the TIFF North American premiere on September 9, Loznitsa warned his audience not to see his protagonist as naive, as others have made the mistake of doing.
We have the advantage of historical fact in knowing how things played out. Kornyev’s crime as a character is that he earnestly believes in the revolutionary ideals of his government.
The Bolshevik Revolution occurred in 1917 when Kornyev would have been hardly a year old. He grew up watching his country transform into a rapidly industrialized, global superpower in the span of 20 years.
Why wouldn’t he believe that his new, wonderful country was capable of doing better?
This young man is a card-carrying member of the Communist Party. He still recalls the appeal to truth in service of the country that was made at his law school graduation. He has every reason to be hopeful that the people he considers his comrades will not let him down.
This is natural. What is unnatural is that his country and his comrades betray the trust he has placed in them.
We live in a hypercapitalist world that encourages individualism and cynical distrust over any communal ideals. But as Canadians, we also live in a high-trust society. We do not expect to be spied on at every turn. Our citizens are able to express their outrage in the media and demand the honouring of our civil and legal rights when they are abused.
Perhaps we will be labelled as naive in 50 years, as Loznitsa said, for being so blind to the ways our own country betrays our trust in the function of its own power and authority.
Bushra Azim Boblai Varsity Contributor
Kornyev investigates an exaggerated bureaucracy that claims to be a well-oiled machine. COURTESY OF TIFF
TIFF review: Sk+te’kmujue’katik (At the Place of Ghosts)
Bretten Hannam’s Sk+te’kmujue’katik (At the Place of Ghosts) is an emotional masterpiece that left me yearning for a DVD copy to take home and rewatch, rewind, pause, and bask in. From the immersive sound production, which Hannam was directly involved in, to the incredible performance of lead actors Blake Alec Miranda and Forrest Goodluck, Sk+te’kmujue’katik is one to add to your watchlist.
Having moved to Canada for university, my time in Toronto has led to my first introduction to Indigenous history, stories, and culture. It was incredible to see, for my second year in a row, Indigenous cinema and stories being showcased at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
Sk+te’kmujue’katik was a movie I knew I had to watch from the moment the TIFF schedule came out in August, and it was worth the wait. The film is in English, French and Mi’kmaw. Hannam’s storytelling is multilayered, about Canada’s colonial history and Mi’kmaw culture and teachings, making Sk+te’kmujue’katik a true gem at the festival.
Sk+te’kmujue’katik works in decolonial, nonlinear time, and follows siblings Mise’l (Miranda) and Antle (Goodluck) as they face a haunting presence from their past. To depict trauma allegorically, the film uses elements of horror, such as the appearance of spirits from the characters’ individual and collective pasts — including spirits of their abusive father and of colonized ancestors. Some are benevolent, offering food and shelter, while others terrify both characters and audience.
It isn’t long into the movie before one of these spirits from their past appears, and corrupts the
very air it touches, with dead leaves flurrying off it. The spirit presents a visual representation of the trauma eating away at Mise’l, Antle, and their more-than-human kin — a concept introduced by Indigenous scholars which emphasizes the recognition of nature not only as a resource, but as something that lives alongside us, that we are connected to.
Mise’l convinces Antle to go into the forest, and the two embark on a journey surrounded by humanoid tree trunks and mossy groves. They are aided by spirits of their past and future, and their more-than-human kin in the forest. Added to the eerie atmosphere the forest creates is the striking artistry of the makeup department, showing the impact of trauma on the body through dark, veiny marks on Mise’l and Antle’s bodies.
In this forest of temporal uncertainty, where time follows a winding path, a collective healing
takes place as elders, great-grandfathers, grand warriors, and future children aid the heroes on their journey.
Sk+te’kmujue’katik reads as a story of decolonial healing together, through community. While the significance of the spirits is up to interpretation, to me, they represent the lasting effect of mass suffering that was left with the Indigenous peoples in Canada due to colonization, and how important community and togetherness are in a healing process.
The ending is hauntingly beautiful, with their father’s body returned to the lake and the two siblings lying on their canoe — one of their more-than-human kin, and a vessel of healing as they float in the lake. Their journey is over; they have reckoned with their traumatic past, their family’s past, and are prepared for whatever the future might hold.
TIFF review: Between Dreams And Hope
Farnoosh Samadi’s Iranian dramatic romance reminds us to never lose hope
Rayn Lakhani
Varsity Contributor
To what lengths would we go to live as our authentic selves? This was the question explored by filmmaker Farnoosh Samadi in her feature film, Between Dreams and Hope . The film is in Farsi, and centres around the lives of Azad (Fereshteh Hosseini) and Nora (Sadaf Asgari), partners living in Tehran’s underground queer community.
The film appeared in this year’s TIFF Platform programme, championing diverse perspectives in film. Previously, her feature film 180° Rule (2020) and her short film Disappearance (2017) premiered at TIFF.
The film begins with what we later learn is a Persian urban legend that involves a unique predicament with a goat, a pregnant woman, and what seems to be a nightmare. The sequence foreshadows the uncertainties that run through the story, hinting at some of the barriers that Azad will soon face.
While Iran provides some legal recognition of trans people, there is still considerable stigma and discrimination present in Iranian law and society as a whole. Hence, when Azad seeks gender-affirming care, lawyers state he can only receive said care on the condition of his father’s consent.
Azad fears approaching his father, as he has not been in contact with him for years. Almost immediately, Azad faces a fork in the road: reaching out to his estranged father, or being unable to take steps towards feeling secure in his identity.
The emotional depth, provided by actors Hosseini and Asgari, conveyed the intensity of the film and their respective roles. Some scenes in the film were too powerful for words to describe.
The moments of periodic silence paired with a close view of the actors’ expressions gave me chills. The authenticity of the emotions from the entire cast, especially moving into the latter half of the film, was a clear standout feature for me. I found myself resonating with the characters’ feelings, every moment of sadness, fear, guilt, rage, joy, and peace.
Amidst the current wave of social issues — such as the rampant human rights abuses against women and the systemic erasure of the LGBTQ+ community — impeding the lives of younger
The social issues presented are not without hope and healing, which serve as an anchor guiding the characters throughout the film. There are several scenes featuring the underground queer community in Tehran, where Azad and Nora can find themselves, and, through community, begin to believe that they both will one day be accepted for who they are by Iranian society.
Their friend group is sympathetic to the issues in accessing gender affirming care that Azad faces, and offers partying and drinking as distractions.
generations from free expression, this film acts as both an intimate character study and a broader callout to the political regime in Iran.
Rather than portraying her story as tragic, and her characters as victims, Samadi chose to depict them as leaders defying institutionalized cruelty.
It was fascinating for me to observe the parallels between the way the queer scene in Tehran was represented and the queer scene in Toronto. Although being LGBTQ+ in Toronto is comparatively more widely accepted, I noted that the spark that unites queer communities
remains active no matter where in the world you go.
Despite their friends’ persistence that they should move abroad, Azad and Nora both agree to stay in Iran, hoping they will someday be allowed to live openly as partners in a country that learns to accept them, rather than hiding away. As Azad says, “One can hide in the dark, but they have to follow the guiding lights around them.” No matter the obstacles that he faced, Azad would not hide; he had to live in his truth.
As a queer individual myself, it was uniquely powerful to watch this film. So often, stories centred on queer and trans relationships end in tragedy and are framed in terms of loss. Witnessing a character not only endure but also overcome the many obstacles in front of him reminded me of the continuous resilience that runs deep in the queer community.
Globally, members of our community face continual discrimination, and having faced this barrier myself, I felt a profound connection to Azad’s journey. Watching his story come to life affirmed that joy and struggle can coexist, and that stories depicting this coexistence deserve to be amplified and told in their fullness.
Following the screening, I was fortunate to speak with Samadi and receive advice for LGBTQ+ identifying students. On the topic of finding resilience, she reminds us not to lose hope in the face of adversity and that we must be at the forefront of both the fight for peace and the fight for ourselves.
The film closes with a warm scene of Nora and Azad floating side-by-side in the sea. As the credits roll, Samadi imparts a message to the audience through this scene: hope will persist, even in times that we may not be able to feel it.
The film captures the obstacles faced by trans people living in Iran. COURTESY OF TIFF
Erin Timur Varsity Contributor
TIFF review: Mile End Kicks
Content warning: This article mentions sexual assault.
Outside the Royal Alexandra Theatre on the opening night of Mile End Kicks, the crowd parted, and a Megabus emerged. I wondered briefly if the bus had gotten lost, and had accidentally driven into the middle of an international film festival. The bus, I learned later, contained the cast of the film, and was transporting them to the theatre.
It’s Chandler Levack’s second feature film, but she wrote it before her first TIFF feature — the success of I Like Movies (TIFF 2022) secured the budget to make Mile End Kicks. The movie follows Grace (Barbie Ferreira) — a young anglophone music critic at a Canadian indie magazine in 2011, where she is surrounded by men in plaid. Grace is moving to Montréal for the summer, where she’s subletting a room in Madeleine’s (Juliette Gariépy) apartment on Rue Saint-Urbain, and she’s writing a 33 ⅓ — a book centred around a seminal album — on Alanis Morissette’s album Jagged Little Pill, and is thrilled with her $500 CAD advance.
Grace leaves behind the Almost Famous poster in her childhood bedroom, a pool prone to turning green without explanation, divorcing parents, a little white dog, and a ‘Keep Calm and Burlington On’ poster in the living room. When she flipped off the CN Tower from her Megabus window, the crowd at my showing cheered. It’s a gesture I felt a special kinship with.
I spent the summer in Montréal for the first time in four years — I was the least cool kind of person there: a McGill student from Ontario — subletting an apartment in the Mile End not far from Madeleine’s in the film. As Grace traipsed up spiral staircases,
sitting on shaded balconies, savouring early morning bagels, loft parties, park afternoons, poetry readings, I failed to forgive myself for moving to Toronto.
Before long, Bone Patrol — this is indeed the name of the band — arrives to disrupt Grace’s writing. She sees them play at a loft party, and, moments after proclaiming that she avoids drugs, smoking, et cetera, accepts weed from one of the band members and asks another for a cigarette.
She ends up romantically entangled with the two: Archie (Devon Bostick), the soft-spoken guitarist with secrets — he is fond of the answer, “personal reasons” — and Chevy (Stanley Simons), the frontman armed with floppy hair and a filthy apartment, spewing aloud his thoughts about art and ‘the abyss,’ easily distracted during sex, making Grace swoon with lines like: “I have, like, one beer back at my place.”
Mile End Kicks is a romantic comedy haunted by the story preceding it. Grace had been having sex with her editor-in-chief, Jeff (Jay Baruchel), whom he insisted she liked and wanted. In the summer, she stands on a rooftop watching Chevy play guitar, and asks him, bathed in hazy orange light with the sun setting on the horizon, if they could have sex there, where they could get caught. It’s a line that Jeff said to Grace when she was bent over his desk. She uses the language of traumatic sex because it’s one she knows.
The film’s structure is largely chronological — but the scenes between Grace and Jeff unfurl out of order. Near the start, Grace rips the plastic off Joanna Newsom’s Have One on Me with her teeth; it’s the album on which Newsom suffered vocal damage and didn’t speak for months. Grace, in turn, spends very little of the film actually writing.
The tension that runs through the film is one of inexpressibility: of wanting to be young and
TIFF review: Still Single
Isebela Sousa
Varsity Contributor
Still Single opens with Chef Masaki Saito’s 2022 Michelin star acceptance speech, in which he drunkenly muses on stage, “I’m still single, I don’t know why.” The 93-minute film goes on to reveal precisely why Saito is both a worldclass chef and also an incorrigible, firmly single bachelor.
Directors Jamal Burger and Jukan Tatseisi ––using an assortment of candid interviews and breathtaking cinematic cooking shots –– reveal
Saito’s brilliant approach to Edomae-style Omakase dining and the extreme lifestyle that fuels his genius. Following him around Toronto and Japan, the film opens a window into the unpredictable life of the culinary visionary behind Yorkville’s Sushi Masaki Saito.
TIFF aptly describes the film as “wildly entertaining,” proven by laughter bubbling out of the audience from the opening scene. There was a clear appreciation for the intimate, spontaneous approach to filming Saito that allowed his charisma to ooze out of the screen. Burger and Tatseisi brought great energy
angry, unapologetic, sharp, incisive, but instead apologizing and smiling over and over again, of wanting terrible men, folding, giving in; of wanting to be a different kind of person, a different kind of woman, but not knowing how to get there.
Levack asks the audience — both as herself in a speech before the screening and through Grace, talking to Madeleine on her balcony — why women want guys in bands, and whether what they really want is to be a guy in a band.
This question is an idea from Levack’s first film, I Like Movies, a semi-autobiographical bildungsroman wherein the protagonist’s gender is switched, telling the story of Lawrence, a seventeen-year-old cinephile. My boyfriend confessed after the screening to staring at the men in suits giving speeches onstage, wondering “which one was Chandler.”
Near the end of I Like Movies , Lawrence’s manager Alana throws her hands up, asking, “Do you know what I would give to be a seventeen-year-old boy just quietly sitting in
the corner watching my DVDs, knowing I’m going to inherit the whole fucking earth?”
Lawrence laments the tragedy that “I have to go through the rest of my life as, like, me,” while Grace continuously falls into being someone she doesn’t want to be as she becomes intoxicated with the idea of men in bands. The desire to know what it’s like to create something as someone else hangs over both films, and it might be why Grace can’t seem to write her book.
Mile End Kicks is a film full of great terrible slam poetry, great terrible men, great terrible sex, and thank god Levack didn’t give in to budgetary pressure to shoot the film in Hamilton and pretend it was Montréal — Québec, I imagine, would not have forgiven this easily.
Editor’s note: The director of Mile End Kicks was The Varsity ’s Editor-in-Chief for Volumes 128 and 129. Thank you Chandler Levack for championing our Arts & Culture section <3
and creativity to the conventionally serious documentary filmmaking style, and their own voices probe Saito’s reflections to a deeper level.
The documentary puts a particular spotlight on the loneliness that seems inextricably linked to the path to excellence. Bit by bit, through interviews with the network of people in Saito’s life — from his elderly mother to his long-time best friend Yasu — we learn that Saito has difficulty maintaining long-term relationships.
Saito himself professes a belief that he is incapable of loving other people, yet challenging
moments in his personal life during filming reveal a different truth. Laughter-filled scenes of drunken revels around clubs and casinos are juxtaposed with those of isolation, loneliness, and a quest for perfection that borders on madness. At the same time, the audience is uncomfortably privy to the sometimes cruel treatment of those working under Saito, particularly his sous chef, Tsuyoshi and his server, Miyuki.
Still Single is unlike any culinary documentary out there, and it was a fantastic Canadian addition to TIFF’s fiftieth year roundup.
Kellie Elrick Varsity Contributor
Montréal indie rock band Tops wrote Bone Patrol’s songs for the film. COURTESY OF
Youth introspection: the search for self the search for self
On the desire to know, understand, and label ourselves in the digital age
I often avoid voicing my opinion in heated discussions with friends and family. A longgone Instagram post I once saw pointed out that an aversion to conflict is common among youngest siblings who may have often felt ignored or unimportant in their childhood.
While I no longer remember which selfproclaimed Instagram therapist made this insightful post, it lurks in my mind, providing me with explanations I’ve long searched for to justify my behaviours.
I see an increasing number of social media posts talking about similar theories for why people develop certain personalities or behaviours. For young people who are trying to discover their identities or who struggle with their mental health, easy access to mental health information on social media might seem like a good thing. But I think it’s leading to an onslaught of ineffectiveness and inaccuracy when it comes to actually trying to understand ourselves and our mental health.
Internet theories and internet therapy
‘Birth Order Theory’ — the school of thought behind that Instagram post about conflict avoidance and being the youngest sibling — suggests that family birth order — whether you’re an oldest, middle, youngest, or only child — can influence personality traits and behavioural patterns, based on differing treatment of siblings by their parents and by each other.
While people can develop various traits independent of family dynamics, I, along with many others, find that theories like this one retain some validity in uncovering how interpersonal relationships in childhood influence adult behavioural patterns.
In this way, some of those social media posts about developmental theories can be comforting, validating, and provide insightful explanations for our bad habits and struggles today. Birth order theory was revolutionary for understanding the root cause of my tendency to shut down when trying to express myself in group conversations.
However, I remember getting caught in a train of thought where I was contextualizing the idea of myself purely within family dynamics, letting that dominate my view of myself. I recognized that I share some traits and habits with other younger siblings, but what does this mere acknowledgment really do for me if I’m treating it as a way to actively avoid correcting my harmful habits?
Surface-level self-improvement
While some online mental health theories serve an educational purpose, the way they proliferate can be damaging. Not only do they simplify complex topics into short-form content, but they also lack the intimacy that comes with seeing a mental health profes-
sional one-on-one. Having a surface-level understanding of mental health gained from social media does not mean you have diagnostic authority, and this kind of thinking leads to practices like therapy-speak.
Therapy-speak refers to the casual usage of psychological terminology used by mental health professionals. Jargon regarding mental health is widely used on social media and has found its way into everyday conversations. Friends acknowledge their ‘quirky’ avoidant-attachment styles in relationships, but continually cry when their failed relationships leave them feeling burnt out or undervalued.
What a lot of people seem to forget is that these attachment styles are rooted in one’s childhood development. Attachment styles aren’t merely an indicator of how we act in romantic relationships, but extend to how the particularities of our childhoods influence how we connect with others throughout our adult lives.
While therapy-speak can be a way to take the first step toward understanding ourselves and improving our mental health, it is up to us to take the next, often harder, steps toward tangible self-improvement.
Many of us who yearn to feel seen or recognized might go online to learn more about ourselves and connect with others like us. For young people, the internet and social media are like our natural domains. Therefore, it only makes sense that that’s where we’d forge our identities through all the personality and behaviour theories, and mental health content. But the theories that Instagram and TikTok provide miss the nuances that define us as individuals, and place them under labels they don’t adequately belong to.
I’ve been reduced to tears by posts that have forced me to come to uncomfortable realizations about myself. How can I differentiate between the trend of identifying with experiences popularized on social media — which I thought were unique to me — from the desire to know who I am? I feel further from knowing ‘myself’ than ever.
Acknowledging and uncovering my mental health
When I was 13, a friend was telling me about Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). She suggested that my patterns of forgetfulness and procrastination might be signs of ADHD. I promptly fell down a rabbit hole of Google searches about ADHD — each symptom I identified with felt increasingly validating.
All my favourite social media sites seemed to indicate that I have ADHD, from informational posts on Pinterest about Executive Dysfunction to reels on Instagram explaining different types of hyperactivity. I thought if I had a tangible reason for why I am the way I am, maybe I could finally be understood,
as someone who simply had ADHD, and not someone who constantly made mistakes or misbehaved.
I thought that having a clinical diagnosis that explained my habits would make me feel less like I was functioning differently from my peers. But beyond feeling like I belong to the category of people with ADHD, no diagnosis would change what I knew for certain: that I was ultimately an imperfect, mistake-making being, and merely coming to terms with my mental health status would not suddenly end my quest to work on myself.
The stigmatization of ADHD and other mental health disorders has prevented me from contacting a professional and getting a formal diagnosis. For years, I’ve been anxious to have confirmation of what was ‘wrong’ with me, yet fearful of how I and others would feel if I knew. The massive amount of content online discussing ADHD propelled my desire to know. In the midst of all this information about who I might be, I found it difficult to truly understand and recognize myself.
Over the years, I’ve grown to have a deeper understanding of mental health as a whole, and have learned what it means for me to struggle with my mental health. Coming to know what my bad habits were came with the temporary relief of emotional validation. But it’s not enough to be able to identify the root of your emotional or behavioural issues — you have to take actionable steps toward working on them.
Generational cluelessness and criticism I know that I’m not alone in my desire to truly explore and understand myself. Many other young people whose lives are entangled with social media experience the same digital distortion of things like their mental health and interpersonal relationships.
For centuries, humans have long had a hungry desire to understand themselves — philosophically, emotionally, mentally, you name it. Millennia ago, philosophers heavily debated the question of what the soul is. We have always, and likely will always, ask questions about what, who, and why we are. Almost all of us spend a lifetime searching for the answers to these questions.
The generation gap has always existed. The term refers to what EBSCO Knowledge Advantage terms the “disconnect between different generations” as they grow up in changing cultures. For example, older generations often struggle with constantly evolving technology. Similarly, mental health is a topic that is often misunderstood and undervalued by Generation X and Baby Boomers, because its importance is not often recognized or prioritized.
This is nothing new: generations have long criticized those who precede them. For thousands of years, it seems, younger generations just haven’t been able to convince their elders that the differences between them are not inherently negative.
What might be new with the generation gap is the role that social media plays in widening it. Because our lives are so intertwined with our screens, our parents and grandparents seem exponentially more socially or culturally distant from us than they were from their parents.
If older generations are already less inclined toward valuing therapy, coupling that with their struggles and/or dislike of new technologies and social media makes phenomena like therapy-speak seem like a ‘Gen Z’ issue.
For those of us struggling with understanding ourselves, when we finally find the answers and find comfort in who we want to be, oftentimes our parents, or other elders around us, begin to take up issues with who we’ve decided to be and how we learn about ourselves.
Self-acceptance as the path forward In short, the struggle doesn’t ever really end — like our parents have and our children will, we all struggle with this overwhelming desire to know and understand ourselves. We might turn to the ever-dominant sphere of social media, which will provide new niches, labels, or categorizations for us to identify with.
To fight this, spirituality and religion serve as a stable respite for me amidst the trenddriven instability of social media. Prayer and faith elevate me above the pains of the past and anxieties about the future, acting as a concentrated moment of reflection in which I focus on something larger than myself altogether.
Whether it’s social media, whatever hot topic of conversation people are discussing, or my everyday life — prayer becomes a break from it all. The nature of prayer for me is such that I enter into a meditative state of mind where I focus solely on God. I entrust my worries to a power much higher than myself. And suddenly, whatever problem I’m facing matters just a bit less. Religion provides a clear purpose for me: to connect with God. And amongst the surrounding conversations, reels, and videos, the clarity is uplifting, and provides peace.
The world is like the train platform at Union Station, each train going in and out is reflective of past, present, and potential future selves. You’re never going to pin down a singular, unmoving ‘self’ — you’ll always find yourself changing and evolving. A social media trend may be part of your journey, but it can’t provide the knowledge, direction, or stability for you to reach your end destination. Self-reflecting on your own terms, understanding your mental health and wellbeing, and taking actionable steps toward self-betterment are the best ways to uncover your true ‘self.’ To me, this realization is the sweetest fruit of introspection.
Zainab Abdul Varsity Contributor
Business & Labour
Team Conrad vs Team Jeremiah: spoiler, the marketing team wins
September 16, 2025
thevarsity.ca/category/business biz@thevarsity.ca
Amazon’s hit proves that even the messiest love triangles can be spun into a marketing masterpiece
Ima Fazlan Varsity Contributor
It’s likely that your “For You” page on Instagram or TikTok has recently been filled with clips from The Summer I Turned Pretty (TSITP), a hit Amazon Prime show based on the book series of the same name by Jenny Han. It features Belly (a nickname for Isabel), a girl caught in a love triangle between brothers Conrad and Jeremiah.
Reaction videos are ubiquitous on social media, and endless frame-by-frame breakdowns attempt to predict her next move. It has become almost impossible to avoid a clip, meme, or at least a heated ‘Team Conrad vs Team Jeremiah’ debate, even if you’ve never watched the show. The craze around the love triangle is reminiscent of the famous ‘Team Edward vs Team Jacob’ debate from the Twilight franchise — the 2008 film’s marketing team used this love triangle to increase fan involvement with their content.
The TSITP craze is more than just fan obsession, though. Amazon has expertly turned the show’s popularity into a marketing machine, proving that even the messiest teen romance can become a cultural phenomenon — and a merchandising goldmine. The final season of the show saw viewership jump by 40 per cent compared to previous seasons, demonstrating how engaged audiences have become with the series.
Amazon’s strategic marketing Amazon’s approach to marketing TSITP goes well beyond traditional advertising. The company chose to increase the show’s earned in-
fluencer coverage — this is the publicity TSITP gets through word of mouth or social media coverage without actively paying influencers or celebrities for mentions. Musician Billy Joel, activist Malala Yousafzai, and singer Sabrina Carpenter are among those who have contributed to social media content surrounding the show.
Much to the dismay of some viewers, Amazon has chosen to release episodes weekly, rather than all at once, sustaining audience engagement over a much longer period. This strategy helped Amazon capitalize on social media chatter, with thousands of posts and reactions per episode keeping fans invested week to week.
Brand collaborations and merchandising Amazon hasn’t been the only one cashing in on TSITP ’s popularity — brands have lined up to ride the wave of Cousins Beach mania.
American Eagle, a US-based teen clothing retailer, launched a limited-edition collection inspired by the show, featuring breezy summer staples promoted across social media. Catbird, a Brooklyn-based jewelry brand, unveiled a romantic collection in direct reference to the show’s heartstopping moments, including the “Love Knot Gold Infinity Charm,” a nod to Conrad and Belly’s infinity necklace. Even candy brands like Sour Patch Kids and Swedish Fish got in on the fun with limited-edition packs representing Team Conrad and Team Jeremiah, giving fans a playful way to declare their allegiance.
These collaborations have allowed viewers to immerse themselves in the show’s aesthetic, creating a lifestyle ecosystem where fan-
dom and commerce collide. According to the Hollywood Reporter, around 14 major brands have partnered with the show in some way, highlighting the massive commercial reach of TSITP
Using Amazon’s X-Ray feature, viewers can also access information about products featured in episodes, allowing for the seamless integration of merchandise into the viewing experience. Apple AirTags and Coca-Cola bottles are directly woven into the storyline to expand outreach to younger audiences and blur the line between entertainment and advertising. This strategy not only reinforces brand visibility but also positions the show as a powerful marketing platform for companies seeking to tap into Gen Z consumer culture.
Why it works
What makes TSITP such a marketing triumph is how perfectly the show’s drama and fandom translate into engagement –– and ultimately, commerce.
The love triangle naturally sparks debate, encouraging fans to pick sides and share memes, theories, and commentary across social media. At
How TIFF powers Toronto’s economy
The festival’s spillover benefits impact many industries in the City
Jenny Yin
Varsity Contributor
For 50 years, the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has been one of the most exciting entertainment events in Toronto. As a charitable cultural organization, TIFF has contributed to building the cul tural and economic sectors of Toronto; in 2024, the 11-day festival created $240 million of economic activity and attracted more than 700,000 visitors. From increased spending on food and drinks to more employment opportunities for workers in the film industry, TIFF has a far-reaching economic impact on Toronto. It is also important to note that the festival relies on hundreds of unpaid volunteers each year who contribute to its operations and success.
Economic spillovers
The revenue TIFF generates encompasses money directly coming from tickets, sponsorships, gov ernment grants and other services. It also includes the revenue arising from the spillover economic ef fects of the festival on other industries. In fact, TIFF encourages enough economic activity to generate $36 million in taxes to municipal, provincial, and na tional levels of government every year.
Tourism occurring due to TIFF also has large effects — the massive influx of tourists fosters economic growth and prosperity in local com munities, with beneficiaries like hotels, restaurants, and the transportation sector. The many dinners, parties, and before and after shows occurring for
the celebrities in town for TIFF are especially helpful to clubs and restaurants in Toronto.
The hotel industry greatly benefits, too. The revenue per available room (RevPAR) is a common metric used to measure hotel performance that is calculated by multiplying a hotel’s occupancy rate
has also opened many new production facilities, which will help create more jobs in this industry for Toronto residents.
TIFF is an amazing platform to support local filmmakers and help kickstart or fast-track their careers. The organization offers programs such as the Directors’ Lab, which selects 16 Canadian and international directors to receive an impactful career-launching mentorship from world-renowned directors, producers, agents, and top industry ex-
the same time, brand collaborations feel organic, letting viewers express their fandom through fashion, jewelry, or even snacks.
These efforts contribute to Amazon’s projected $60 billion USD in retail media ad revenue this year, a marked increase from last year’s number of $56.2 billion. This shows how long-form content and social media marketing can generate enormous financial profit.
By combining addictive storytelling with social media buzz, immersive merchandise, and interactive tech, Amazon has created a self-sustaining ecosystem where engagement and commerce feed each other.
In the end, while fans debate endlessly over whether Belly belongs with Conrad or Jeremiah, the real winner is clear: Amazon’s marketing team. By turning every plot twist into shareable clips, every outfit into a shopping opportunity, and every episode into a week-long event, they’ve transformed a teen romance into a fullblown cultural and commercial phenomenon. The Summer I Turned Pretty proves that in today’s streaming world, even the messiest love triangle can be a masterclass in marketing.
TIFF is making efforts to screen more Indigenous films. The festival’s official lineup includes eight films and two shorts by Canadian Indigenous filmmakers, a record-high in TIFF’s 50-year history. However, this is still a small fraction of the 291 films
For decades, Indigenous filmmakers were working with minimal funding, according to Kerry Swanson, CEO of the Indigenous Screen Office (ISO) —
Managing TIFF’s environmental impact
an advocacy group supporting First Nations, Inuit, and Métis filmmakers. Fortunately, in recent years, ISO and the Canadian government have started allocating funds to support and foster the creative talents of First Nations, signifying another step in reconciliation. This year, they financed Nika and Madison — a film about two Indigenous girls on the run after a dreadful encounter with the police.
While the tourism economy booms during this period, the City of Toronto must tackle the negative impacts. Parts of its budget must be allocated to managing negative effects like traffic jams or high energy consumption.
TIFF is not blind to its environmental effects; each year, it tries new environmental strategies to mitigate them. In 2024, they partnered with Invert, a carbon reduction and removal company, which helps offset carbon emissions of guest travel. This year, TIFF is working with Bullfrog Power to only use renewable energy to power its screenings.
Despite this, the festival has received criticism over the connections of its partners to fossil fuels in the past. In 2023, various members of the film industry signed an open letter to TIFF asking it to cut ties with its sponsor RBC — the bank is one of Canada’s biggest fossil fuel financiers. However, RBC has remained a major sponsor of TIFF. While the festival is a large driver of economic activity in the city and contributes to its cultural growth, it is important that it continues to take steps to ensure its sustainable future.
OLIVIA MAR/THEVARSITY
Sports
September 16, 2025
thevarsity.ca/section/sports
sports@thevarsity.ca
Review: Blink and you’ll miss Eephus
Carson Lund’s 2024 debut film is full of the subtle joy of sport
Jake Takeuchi Managing Online Editor
I am reaching the age where it’s looking pretty certain that dreams of professional contracts, bringing the title home to my hometown, and playing in the World Cup finals are factual impossibilities.
I confess that when I see 18-year-old Lamine Yamal not only compete, but dominate at the highest level of soccer, or drafted teenagers whose birth years get larger and more distant from mine, I can’t help but feel an insecure shred of jealousy, and a bitterness for a door that has been closed to me forever. But time is not a friend or foe, and will move indifferently forward, without even a glance back at the moments our bodies occupy.
Set in a small Massachusetts town in the 1990s, Carson Lund’s directorial debut, Eephus , follows the last ever game between two local amateur baseball teams. The film is named after an eephus pitch, which is described by a pitcher in the movie, Merritt Nettles (Nate Fisher), as “a type of curveball that is pitched so unnaturally slow that it confuses the batter.”
Hardcore baseball fans will enjoy the cameo of MLB pitcher Bill “Spaceman” Lee, who is credited with popularizing the eephus pitch.
Nettles goes on to describe the pitch as something that “stays in the air forever. You get bored watching it. I get bored. And the hitter does, so he tries to swing at it like normal. But
it’s already past him, or it waits until he’s done swinging. The eephus makes him lose track of time. It’s pretty mean that way.”
A fellow teammate, Cooper Bassett (Connor Marx), really hits home the central metaphor by replying, “I like that it’s kind of like baseball. I’m looking around for something to happen, then poof, game’s over.”
The film has no protagonist or any plot beyond the actual game being played out on the field. Politics are at the periphery, and only exist in the passing comments of the elderly, the quiet voice on the radio, and the small signs that adorn the field. Interestingly, the field
Review: The fast and fictional Brad Pitt drives box office success in F1
The pinnacle of motorsport reached a new height with the release of the sports drama movie F1, directed by Joseph Kosinski. With some theatres still playing the film over two months after opening weekend on June 27, Formula One (F1) superfans and casual cinema goers alike have made their pit stops at the screens to get their kick of fast cars and fiery rivalries.
Overview: fact or fiction?
F1 follows Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt), a former F1 driver who exited the sport after suffering a brutal collision early on in his career. Decades later, he reluctantly returns to the paddock when his old F1 teammate Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) pleads with Hayes to join Apex Grand Prix (APXGP), a new F1 team in desperate need of securing a race victory. If the team fails to win at least one Grand Prix by the end of the season, their investors will sell Cervantes’ team.
Hayes begins to work closely alongside his new teammate Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), a feisty young driver who often clashes heads and cars with Hayes. While attempting to navigate his new machinery, Hayes also frequently meets with Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon), the team’s technical director.
With only half of a season left to secure a victory and save APXGP, Hayes must learn how to compete, collaborate, and confront his complicated relationship with F1 racing. The plot is packed with action, competition, and drama, but diehard F1 fans have been finding themselves in heated debates and discussions alike: how accurately does the fictional movie depict the very real and complex sport?
Fans’ analysis
To start, Hayes’ recruitment into the team is highly unlikely. Every F1 team is composed of two drivers. Additionally, each team has at least one reserve driver: they attend most, if not all, races throughout
the season and are ready to step in when needed, typically due to illness or injury from the team’s main pair of racers.
Pearce’s first APXGP teammate was injured following a gnarly crash mid-season, opening up the seat for Hayes to step in. While the team’s reserve driver, Luca Cortez (Luciano Bacheta), is also very quickly mentioned, there is no point made for why he isn’t chosen instead!
While one could argue that having two young, inexperienced drivers on one team that is already in jeopardy is not a smart move, neither is employing a driver who hasn’t competed in any F1 races for over 30 years.
Another gripe many F1 fans held with the film was a move done by Hayes that seemed eerily similar to a real F1 incident from the 2008 Singaporean Grand Prix: Crashgate.
To summarize, driver Nelson Piquet Jr. intentionally but illegally crashed his own car to release a safety car, which is often favourable for maintaining the lead, as cars are not allowed to pass each other behind the safety car. The crash indeed released a safety car, becoming advantageous for his teammate, Fernando Alonso.
After a thorough investigation, Piquet Jr. and several members of his team kissed their careers in F1 goodbye, facing harsh bans and disqualifications. In the movie, Hayes pulled an almost-identical stunt at the Hungarian Grand Prix, match-fixing for Pearce to secure APXGP’s first top-10 finish while facing zero penalties. This was one of the many moments throughout the film that made many F1 enthusiasts cringe and sigh.
The movie deliberately sacrifices realism for drama: it prioritizes the emotional redemption arc of a washed-up athlete and ignores strict rules held in place to maintain the fairness of the sport. If you’re an F1 fan, don’t expect a lot of authentic racing to translate over onto the big screen. However, if you’re looking for a film with intense racing, spunky competition, and several brief cameos of Charles Leclerc, the F1 movie certainly gets a green flag.
is being replaced by a public school, rather than a condominium complex or a mall.
Much like in real life, you can choose to make what you want from these details, but the film is far more interested in capturing that tender pleasure of amateur sport than holding any kind of ideological position. The performances of the older gentlemen in the crowd and on the field, full of whimsy, crass gruffness, and minor feats of athleticism — potbellies, aching joints, and all — are a highlight.
A valid criticism of the film is that it drags on at times, and this movie certainly won’t appeal to everyone. It’s a little tedious, which
is a criticism often levelled at baseball itself. There’s little tension in the baseball game that’s being played out. But the film’s quaintness and lack of concrete direction are also its charm. Lund fills the movie with subtle joy, visually in the form of beautiful lingering shots of the baseball field in golden autumn glory, and in the relatability of the quirky chirps and mundane frustrations of the characters.
None of these moments are dramatic, awe-inspiring feats of humanity. But anyone who has ever played an amateur sport or grown up around this culture of small sporting communities will be able to relate to and understand the smaller pleasures Lund is trying to emulate. The browning leaves on a pitch. Losing balls. Collective obscenities at your opponents and the referee.
More than anything, the film is like watching a local pickup game at the park. You notice the relationships and the camaraderie of the players in their small interactions and plays. You briefly imagine the lives of these players, the spectators, the collective tracking the ball with their eyes. Polite claps, small cheers. The movie truly hits it out of the park when it comes to expressing a communal nostalgia.
Eephus is a strong indie baseball film that reminds you that time isn’t marked by superstar plays or life-changing dramatic endings, but by a thousand quiet goodbyes to the way things were. And those moments — like the film — are quietly beautiful.
JAYLIN KIM/THEVARSITY
Kasia Joy Burzymowski
Varsity Contributor
CHLOE
Blues bombard Lions in dominant season opener
Imposing play on both ends propels Blues to a successful season start
In their season opener on September 6, The Varsity Blues men’s rugby team showed no signs of rust despite a lengthy off-season — in fact, it was the opposite.
At Varsity Stadium, the York Lions proved no match for the men’s rugby team, as the Blues overwhelmed them from start to finish and won their season debut, 62–5.
A well-oiled machine perfectly encapsulates the Blues’ 15-man squad as they seemingly put up points at will, while coming up with crucial stops on the defensive end.
The Blues started the season with a victory and have now won three straight matches against the Lions by large margins.
What happened?
U of T’s tenacious defence and surging offence set the tone of the match. After forcing a scrum off a York turnover, the Blues immediately found themselves in the scoresheet after back three Jackey Kuang burst for a try in the first minute, taking the score to 5–0.
Seven minutes later, the Blues forced their way into another try after a maul, and kicked a successful conversion to extend their lead to double digits, 12–0. York tried to gain some offensive ground and came within inches of the end zone, but U of T made some timely tackles to stop the Lions.
The Blues then capitalized on a line-out play stoppage, overpowering York with their physicality
on another maul to tally their third try of the night, furthering the gap to 17–0. The Lions responded by stealing possession and earning a penalty opportunity, which U of T thwarted after York chose to run the ball to end the half.
“Credit to York, they came out firing, they had some big boys, they had some hard lines. They came at us. But at the end of the day, it’s you and your team versus the other team. You have to get your shoulder down and make a hit,” said team captain Eric Vann in a post-game interview with The Varsity, when asked about stopping York’s scoring chances postgame.
Despite blanking the Lions in the first half, the Blues left no room for any comeback after executing seamless plays through crisp passes
and tactically-timed kicks in the second half. When asked about the team’s mindset going into the second half, Vann said, “Our coach said that we all knew they were gonna come up firing. It was a close game, with a couple of scores. But we knew if we came out hard and put a couple of points early, that would set us up and finish out the game.”
In the 43rd minute, U of T once again found themselves on the cusp of scoring. After weaving passes, back three Ruaidhri Neville nailed a forward kick to the striding Kuang for another try, followed by a conversion, widening the lead to 24–0. York retaliated after finally scoring a try into the end zone after a catching error from the Blues, to cut the lead to 24–5.
From then on, the Blues went on a rampage, burying tries one after the other using wellplaced criss-cross passes and spinning manoeuvres to finish out the game, cruising to a 62–5 domination.
What’s next?
The Blues travelled east to face the Royal Military College on September 13, where they fell 22–31. Vann, looking forward to the match, said, “That is a big one, a really big week for us. Some big military boys over there. So we gotta make sure we’re ready to put in some hits, and do all the stuff that isn’t fun.” The Blues will play the University of Guelph next, on September 20.
Blues take explosive exhibition game against Guelph Gryphons
Zack Smith’s speedy overtime goal propels the Blues to their first win of the season
Ava Searle Varsity Contributor
when the Blues fell 4–3 in Guelph on November 22, 2024.
What happened?
The second period began much like the first, with three more penalties in quick succession. Both teams exchanged shots for the first 10 minutes until Blues forward Brandon Santa Juana scored, tying the game 1–1 and swinging momentum in the Blues’ favour.
The Gryphons’ defense faltered when Nolan Roberts took a cross-checking penalty at the 11th minute, giving the Blues a power-play opportunity
— yet the Gryphons scored a shorthanded goal to regain a 2–1 lead. Blues goalie Rayce Ramsey faced a barrage of shots, making impressive saves throughout. With 52 seconds remaining in the period, Blues forward Eddie Yan’s shot ricocheted off Gryphons goalie Olivier Ciarlo and crossed the goal line, ending the period tied at 2–2.
Toronto dominated the start of the third period, applying early pressure on the Gryphons.
Another 10-minute misconduct was issued to Guelph’s defenseman Ethan Casper for checking from behind. The period ended with the score still tied, sending the game into overtime. Just over a minute into overtime, Blues forward Zack Smith fired a wrist shot that found the back of the Gryphon’s net. The Blues secured the win to the delight of the home crowd.
What’s next?
The Blues played again at Varsity Arena on September 12, where they took on the Laurier Golden Hawks. With a 4–2 win, they extended their win streak to two against the Golden Hawks, following another 4–2 win when they last faced off on January 16. The Blues start their regular season on October 2 against Brock
Jean Patrick Vidad Varsity Contributor
The Varsity Blues men’s hockey team edged out the Guelph Gryphons with a 3–2 overtime win in their exhibition match at Varsity Arena on September 11. The victory avenged their last matchup,
The Blues won their long-awaited home opener. COURTESY OF SEYRAN MAMMADOV CC VARSITY BLUES
The Blues and Gryphons were aggressive on the ice, and many penalties were handed
Sports and spectacle: are sports reality shows worth the hype?
The Varsity’s review of some of the most popular sports documentary series
For sports fans, the teams we support can almost feel like an extension of our identity. We invest countless hours watching the highs and lows, turning what is supposed to be a ‘fun game’ into an event that more often than not dictates our mood throughout the day, week and sometimes even the entire month.
Be it soccer, Formula 1 (F1), hockey, or football, this emotional attachment is universal among sports fans. So every now and then, when a new sports documentary or series is released on the inner workings of the teams we love, we are drawn in like a moth to a flame. Here, The Varsity presents to you a list of sports reality shows to watch for casual and hardcore fans alike.
Drive To Survive
Drive to Survive takes us behind the scenes into what is regarded as one of the most exclusive sports in the world. Each season of the series spans a calendar year of everything that happens beyond the races, with each episode usually focusing on one of the 10
teams in F1. It covers driver and team manager testimonies, giving fans a look into all the highs and lows from a different perspective.
What the series does well is that it does not necessarily need its audience to be a fan of F1 to enjoy it. The drama and rivalries are well-written, keeping fans of the show on the edge of their seats. However, this is simultaneously the show’s shortcoming.
Since there is a need to keep viewers engaged, the show has often been criticized for making mountains out of molehills. For example, four-time F1 World Champion Max Verstappen refused to be in season four of the series because they ‘faked’ rivalries. If you can cut through the noise, however, this is still a show worth watching.
All Or Nothing
All or Nothing is a series that showcases individual seasons of particular teams in soccer, football, hockey, and rugby. But in my opinion, what they do best is soccer. From Arsenal to the German National team, there are quite a few sub-series to choose from. What makes the series stand out as a whole, though, is its balance between on-pitch drama and off-pitch storytelling.
In the Manchester City series, fans get to see fiery speeches from their team’s managers and coaching staff before the game, allowing a closer glimpse into team culture and strategy. Unlike some other sports documentaries that can feel overly dramatized, All or Nothing often benefits from the natural stakes of soccer, such as relegation battles and mid-season tournaments.
While episodes can sometimes feel like a polished public relations (PR) product for the clubs involved, the raw emotions of players and managers make it an authentic and gripping watch. My only criticism of the series would be that it is geared more towards seasoned fans as opposed to casual watchers.
Faceoff: Inside The NHL
What would a list about sports shows in a Canadian publication be without a bit of hockey? Similar to Drive to Survive, Faceoff looks into the recent NHL season, with each episode focusing on a different team and its players. The very first episode opens with the Toronto Maple Leafs, with a focus on William Nylander.
So far, we have seen that with sports reality, the over dramatization and a focus on good PR can take away some of the authenticity. However, with a sport like hockey, this red tape is barely present. In the opening minutes, once viewers see Nylander have a go at his teammates, saying, “F—ing shoot it! Stop f— ing crying! This is the f—ing issue, you guys f—ing b—- about s—-. Let’s f—ing go!” they know they are going to be in for a wild ride.
The rest of the series continues in a similar manner, taking viewers all the way to the Stanley Cup finals. If you enjoy brash and unapologetic personalities and have been looking to get into following the NHL, this series is definitely a must-watch. Ultimately, there is a plethora of sports reality series to choose from, and the genre seems to only keep growing; Drive to Survive , All or Nothing , and Faceoff: Inside the NHL represent only a drop in the bucket of seemingly endless sports reality television content. However, they exemplify the everlasting interest of audiences in the lives of professional athletes, with the potential to broaden sports viewer demographics.
Samm Mohibuddin
Varsity Contributor
September 16, 2025
thevarsity.ca/category/opinion opinion@thevarsity.ca
The age that lost its artists
Why our artists deserve more
Lujaine Hallschmid Varsity Contributor
Let’s say, hypothetically, Leonardo da Vinci had been born in the 21st century. Upon reaching young adulthood, he would choose a career. The young da Vinci would likely recognize his own aptitude for the arts and invention. However, in today’s world, it’s difficult to be an artist, let alone a Renaissance man — one who seeks to master a variety of disciplines. Faced with the need to be ‘practical,’ da Vinci might not have spent so much time on painting, and might have chosen to focus his life’s work on engineering or science. The world would have never known the “Vitruvian Man” or the “Mona Lisa.”
The Toronto Star recently wrote that the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) runs on the basis of thousands of unpaid volunteers each year. But being underpaid in the arts scene is not unique to Toronto. In New York, the popular fashion podcast “The Cutting Room Floor” recently posted a job listing for a role which “combines the responsibilities of [both] a bookings administrator and studio coordinator.” The salary for this role is the equivalent of $76,200 CAD, a wage now considered unlivable in New York.
The modern world treats art as surplus labour, existing only because of and for the passion of those who create it. In a world that
demands new technologies, medicines, and efficiencies, the arts have become an expendable luxury. I believe this to be both historically unusual, and culturally dangerous.
The era of the artisan
Since the early days of our history, art has been central to human society. The creation of art evolved in parallel to pivotal developments in language and social grouping, which are driven by evolutionary changes in our neural structures.
Once civilizations rose, artists belonged to a class of citizens, grouped with craftsmen, smiths, and similarly skilled labourers called artisans. Typically hierarchically situated somewhere between peasants and the nobility, the artisan class existed in many societies, from Ancient Mesopotamia to Imperial China to Medieval Europe.
Historically, artisans promoted the depth and pride of their respective cultures, creating local traditions and amassing collections. They hold a long history in political radicalism, where they defended values through their work and relationships to the community and higher classes.
Notably, during the French Revolution of 1789, artisans headed the sans-culottes, a group of working-class radicals who wore long pants instead of the half-pants of the bourgeoisie in protest of economic recession.
Superman will not save us
Alexandra Li Varsity Contributor
Director James Gunn released his re-envisionment of the classic DC hero in July with Superman (2025), drumming up a left-wing social media parade praising this portrayal of Clark Kent as refreshingly optimistic, hopeful, and anti-Zionist. Right-wing netizens and critics alike have dubbed this picture a product of ‘wokeism,’ lamenting the narrative’s emphasis on Superman’s immigrant status and anti-war sentiments.
Perhaps Superman is not simply a happygo-lucky retelling of classic heroism, but rather an uninformed and pernicious white-saviour response to geopolitical tensions. I invite readers to consider why Hollywood might be promoting outsider optimism during this time. Who benefits from disinheriting the consequences of genocide via fictive superhuman resolutions? Is there an emotional distance being wedged between real human activism and justice?
White saviourism on screen
This brings me to one of the film’s most glaring sins: its indulgence in white saviourism. White saviourism is a narrative trope through which a powerful, white outsider swoops in to solve crises in marginalized or non-Western communities, reducing local actors to passive background figures. This tired cliché teaches audiences to view oppressed peoples as helpless and broken.
Modern artists continue to carry out this legacy. In the ’60s, during the American Civil Rights Movement, artists such as Jacob Lawrence and Faith Ringgold used the visual arts to illustrate the injustices experienced by Black Americans.
The cost of undervaluing art
Modern artists face different struggles than the artisans of the past. The legitimacy afforded to artisans gave them the power to ask for more.
William M. Reddy argues, in his book The Rise of Market Culture , that workers in the nineteenth century campaigned more successfully for higher compensation because they still saw themselves as individual artisans, rather than nameless cogs in a greater machine.
A great artist has the ability to influence behaviours and attitudes. We can know facts to be true, but when we are confronted with artistic works that leverage and manifest these facts, we come to a deeper understanding of their significance.
When passion becomes free labour It doesn’t matter whether working in the arts is your dream job or not. The fact is, not everyone has the ability to create truly great art. It’s an elusive, hard-earned skill.
Rather, we are faced with a symptom of a greater issue: that this generation is living far from the practices that have sustained us for millennia. It isn’t entirely surprising that, as a society, our primary focus isn’t uplifting the arts, as there are many pressing issues on our collective consciousness. But by stripping the arts of their due respect, we stifle the human ability to imagine something better.
Superman’s
In Superman, Boravia and Jarhanpur — standins for ‘wealthy European’ and the stereotypical ‘poor’ nation of the Global South respectively — are utilized as background settings for Superman’s moral advocacy. Acting as a significant conflict in the film, the Boravian government ventures to contest Jarhanpurian land. Territorial tensions eventually lead to genocidal sentiments as Boravia seeks to force Jarhanpur to cede land with the help of the villainous billionaire Lex Luthor and his brainchild, the conglomerate giant LexCorp.
Landscape shots of Jarhanpurian people holding flags and pitchforks, cheering for an American hero, rekindle the classic image of poor, racialized people looking Westward for salvation from their unfortunate realities. The audience is meant to conflate US soft power with benevolent rescue, obscuring the very real complicity of American foreign policy in fueling conflict.
Oversimplification of geopolitics
James Gunn grossly oversimplifies geopolitical power struggles through the character debasement of Lex Luthor. The writing directs blame towards the insecurities of a singular villain instead of engaging with the various contextual reasons why territorial contestation and genocide occur.
In this film, Lex Luthor becomes a metaphor for exorbitantly wealthy American techno-fetishists, eternally envious of the man in the sky. Luthor’s
By choosing to pay fairly for the art we consume, treating art as labour rather than leisure and demanding that corporations do the same, we give our artists autonomy and the room to create purposefully. For creative visionaries to exist, artists must be recognized and fairly compensated for what they are: essential architects of the cultural fabric of society.
perfect
white saviourism pushes our attention to the wrong heroes
true comic origins were rooted in poverty and mental illness, conditions which created the sociopathic and deeply troubled character whom the DC Universe loves to hate. It is a low-stakes position to condemn this new champion of latestage capitalism.
The plot behind the Jarhanpurian genocide is revealed in the film’s climax. During an emotionally charged confrontation, Luthor admits to Superman that he had armed the Boravian government with the intention of orchestrating Superman’s defiance of international law and conventions out of jealousy. What is Luthor meant to represent in this situation? The hubris of the one percent? Our real conflicts are not orchestrated by singular actors with fragile egos.
Perhaps Gunn is right. Clearly, an international humanitarian issue, such as ethnic cleansing, could only best be metaphorically resolved through a feud between bald Satan and American Jesus. Thank you, American Jesus.
Narrative tropes
The whole point of Superman’s life as Clark Kent, a facade constraining his actual capacity, is that he cannot afford to be alone. Superman’s tragedy is that he is constantly trying to be human, though it is evident that he is not. His position as a superhuman-alien-demigod so greatly removes his actions from humanity that this rendition reads closer to Thor’s battles with Jörmungandr than a story about the indomitable human spirit.
Why are we turning to fairy tales to bring us solace during times of moral decay? Can we no longer imagine ourselves as heroes? With the immediate and overwhelming access to stories covering global violence, warfare, and the suppression of human dignity, we should do well to remember the real activists risking their lives to uphold justice, such as the journalists risking their lives to share the truth about the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Superman and representations of war and genocide
The film’s war sequences are consolidated in unnuanced shots of a poorly weaponized mob standing before a faceless militia. The most
compelling scene in this setting was a brief moment of a Jarhanpurian child clutching a flag, visibly shaken with fear.
The human cost of genocide is reduced to a cutaway before Green Lantern, Mister Terrific, Metamorpho, and Hawkgirl, all members of Metropolis’s defence force, swoop in theatrically to thwart the violence. Slapstick comedy ensues. Green birds are flipped from under tanks by a blonde with a bowl cut wearing spandex.
Hawkgirl chases down the screaming Boravian president, Vasil Ghurkos. Metamorpho becomes a sandstorm and turns his arms into massive hammers. The tension is relieved almost instantaneously. No trauma, no bloody cleanup. No more pitchforks and crying babies. So simple, so perfect.
The scene meant to showcase the horrors of genocide was turned into a cartoonish spectacle by blasé screenwriters. Sure, we should all know by now that war is bad. Corruption is bad. Killing is bad. But maybe, for a superhero film meant to double as social commentary, the writers should have cared to explain why.
Superman is fiction — he is a Herculean tale of what humans may only strive to be. Our world does not have extraterrestrial heroes to save us from burning skyscrapers or nuclear warheads. We do not have a supersquad that is capable of stopping genocide in minutes. We have human activists, protestors, political representatives, journalists, and many, many martyrs. They do not regenerate with solar radiation; they fall to bullets and drone strikes every day.
Our heroes do not fight against eclectic supervillains with nano-robotic mercenaries at their beck and call. They fight fascism and human rights violations. They do not choose to engage with injustice in the spirit of altruism — they are condemned to it because there are no alternatives. Superman will not save us, so let us turn our attention from perfectly two-dimensional moral narratives to the very complex, imperfect, and mortal struggles of human resistance in the real world.
SIMONA AGOSTINO/THEVARSITY
September 16, 2025
TIFF review: Dandelion’s Odyssey
An analysis of Momoko Seto’s debut feature film
Mia White Varsity Contributor
On Saturday, September 6, Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) attendees embarked on an intergalactic journey of epic proportions, experiencing the North American premiere of director Momoko Seto’s first feature film, Dandelion’s Odyssey.
The main characters in this dialogue-free film are four dandelion seeds, also known as achenes, which float from an Earth destroyed by nuclear war to seek refuge among the stars. The harrowing opening sequence, featuring a series of nuclear detonations destroying the achenes’ — and our — home, sets a sombre tone, making the stakes of their journey clear: their survival. Some small piece of Earth’s life rests upon their ability to adapt to life on an alien planet.
Dandelion’s Odyssey’s reinvention of native Earth species as fantastical alien beings, combined with its exploration of the contemporary issues of nuclear warfare and climate change, renders it an impressive addition to the science fiction genre. It urges the audience to consider our own world in a way that decentres humans.
A journey to the center of another planet
Throughout the achenes’ journey, audience members are introduced to a realm where the design of alien creatures and their biomes, while inspired by real Earth species, align closer with fantasy than scientific fact.
The planet where the achenes strive to plant themselves is circled by rings of floating squids.
Glaciers melt to free tadpoles that swim through the air. Even the planet’s flora sings in the brassy tones of trumpets, startling the achenes from their rest and forcing them onwards to find a safe place to land.
Juxtaposed with these bizarre species, however, are a handful of creatures that international audiences would be familiar with: slugs, slime moulds, moths and mantises. These earthen creatures act as both allies and opponents in the achenes’ quest for safety, either assisting them in transportation from one strange locale to the next or driving them away with threatening displays of aggression.
This mesh of the fantastic and the familiar serves to highlight the wonders we might find in our own world. By showing a version of nature that is both otherworldly yet recognizable, it rekindles a sense of wonder for nature that can often be forgotten in the hustle and bustle of life, especially for the smaller critters and plants in our environments that we don’t need to search for, like achenes.
As the only surviving piece of Earth, the audience is forced to root for and connect with what most label as weeds, pushing us to reevaluate our view of nature and have empathy for all the beings with which we share a planet.
On
empathy
This empathy for the natural world was a topic of the question-and-answer period following the film screening. During this insightful dive into the making of Dandelion’s Odyssey, Seto shared a desire for audience members to view the story and its world from the perspective of a plant. She hopes
they might experience empathy, moving them to protect the species on the planet they call home from the repercussions of climate change.
This dream was communicated through each frame of the film, from the tender moments where the achenes shared a remarkably human-like embrace, to the scenes of panic and peril unfolding in hot springs and sandstorms.
The powerful relatability that permeates each of Dandelion’s Odyssey’s scenes speaks to the unique angle science fiction movies bring to film discourse. Although sometimes outlandish in story and experimental in technique, the science fiction genre sheds new light on pressing topics,
encouraging viewers to contemplate how their worldview might evolve as science shifts.
Seto’s Dandelion’s Odyssey is no exception, raising questions of whether climate change or nuclear weaponry, like within the film, might threaten the natural beauty across our world, and whether humanity could adapt as readily to the consequences as Seto’s four non-human protagonists. With its creative premise and sensitive approach to its contemporary topics, Dandelion’s Odyssey will undoubtedly leave a lasting impression on Canadian audiences, showing director Momoko Seto’s promise as an up-andcoming director of sci-fi films.
TIFF review: The unreal world of Egghead Republic
A sci-fi fever dream from Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja
Egghead Republic, screened this year at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), takes a refreshingly satirical look at science fiction. The premise is classically sci-fi: in an alternate history where the Cold War left behind a wasteland in Kazakhstan, mutant creatures are rumoured to roam the radioactive zone.
Unpaid illustration intern Sonja (Ella Rae Rappaport) joins a team from the Kalamazoo Herald newsroom to visit the site and find out what really lies in the ruins. Where another film might build this into a solemn dystopia, Egghead Republic instead embraces absurdity and lets the audience draw connections to reality for themselves.
Directors Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja created the 97-minute fever dream inspired by
The entertaining, the funny, and the ugly The movie begins with Sonja, the fictional greatniece of Schmidt — who is also in the movie — hoping to kickstart her career in illustration. The reality of her internship is one filled with drugs, manipulation, and uncomfortable advances from her middle-aged boss, Dino Davis (Tyler Labine).
The Kalamazoo Herald team is rounded out by camera operators Turan (Arvin Kananian) and Gemma (Emma Creed), who also want nothing more than to get ahead in the competitive media industry. As Sonja, Gemma, and Turan fight for recognition and opportunity, their sense of what’s right and wrong is overshadowed by Dino’s erratic authority.
Though the team’s descent into chaos is
power in the industry, and she responds by doing whatever Dino asks, even when it’s to her detriment. She struggles to impress her coworkers or bring any recognition to her work, marring her idyllic view of the job — a common experience for anyone starting out their career.
The unpaid internship is not a dystopian invention, and Egghead Republic doesn’t treat it as one, using Kägerman’s personal experiences as inspiration.
Why satirical sci-fi?
The scientific basis of the film is believable, making the twists and turns of the plot a subversion of expectations. Explanations of atomic bombs and Geiger counters are
By leaning into abstraction and fiction, Egghead Republic makes a sci-fi setting that feels frighteningly close to a terrifying future reality feel more approachable to the audience, though the plot can feel hard to follow at times. This narrative choice also makes the dystopian elements of the story less severe, inviting an honest look at the realities of the film’s setting without demanding it.
Egghead Republic is satire, a difficult genre to impart a sincere sentiment with. This is especially true in the austere realm of sci-fi and dystopian fiction, which can struggle with taking itself too seriously.
It is easy to take a story’s message at face value, to look at Sonja as an example of what to do when faced with feeling unimportant in a workplace. But it would do the film a disservice
Film still depicting dandelion achenes in an alien world. COURTESY OF TIFF
Lucia McLaren
Contributor
September 16, 2025
thevarsity.ca/category/science science@thevarsity.ca
Speaking about the artificial intelligence (AI) models that exist today, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said: “GPT-4 is the dumbest model any of you will ever, ever have to use again, by a lot.”
As AI companies like OpenAI, xAI, Google, Meta, and Anthropic are throwing billions of dollars into improving AI models, the expectation is that AI models will continue to improve.
Traditionally, making the models larger by training them on more data has been thought to be the most effective way to improve them. ‘Just make it bigger’ seems to be the motto here. And so far? It works. Bigger models — on average — outperform smaller ones.
But, “Is bigger better? And, should compute be the foundation of governing risk for generative AI?” ‘Compute’ refers to the computational resources that are needed to train and run an AI model. These were the questions posed by the keynote speaker, Sara Hooker, an expert in machine learning and the leader of Cohere for AI, at the Absolutely Interdisciplinary AI conference held on May 29.
This conference, hosted by the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Science and Technology at U of T, brought together researchers and students to discuss the challenges presented by AI as its usage grows more common.
With new technology like AI, we must be cognizant of the risks it poses. So far, the AI industry and policymakers have taken a default stance that the risk associated with larger models is higher than that of smaller ones. How does this policy need to change to better fit current AI models and their risks?
Current assumptions about risk Hooker spoke about how both the US and the European Union have suggested regulation based on a threshold compute size, so that “models trained above a certain threshold of computer [size] should be subject to more scrutiny.” Companies building these larger models would have to provide reports to the government, including information on how the models are trained.
AI companies have oriented themselves with the view that scaling is inevitable — that models are going to keep getting bigger, and will continue to be trained on more data — so effort must be directed towards responsible scaling and minimizing risk.
Risks associated with AI models include hallucinations — the tendency of AI models to cook up information that is not true. Additionally, there are privacy concerns — the models may accidentally give out proprietary or private information. Moreover, models can be biased — the models may amplify stereotypes or produce hateful texts. Finally, creators can lose control — the models may act in ways the creators cannot reliably control.
When adding more parameters to make a model larger, it is hard to predict how its output is going to change — this means that there is more room for these risks to arise. This is why governments and AI companies seem convinced that the compute size of a model is a good predictor of the risk it poses. Is this true?
The slow death of scaling in AI development
Insights from the Absolutely Interdisciplinary AI conference
Alternate methods to scaling Bigger models perform better than smaller ones, but there are important caveats. Making a model bigger only slightly increases its performance now that models have already become so large. According to Hooker, “If you double [the compute size of your model], you get… a measly two percentage points [of performance].”
The diminishing returns are due to many reasons, including exploding computational and energy costs, as well as limited high-quality training data. As OpenAI’s co-founder, Ilya Sutskever, put it at the NeurIPS conference in Vancouver in 2024, “We have but one internet.”
In fact, pruning a model, or scaling it down after it has been trained, does not significantly impact the performance. Once it has been pruned, what you end up with is a relatively smaller model with the performance — and therefore risk potential — of a larger model.
The boost in performance you could get by increasing the compute size of a model has thus started to plateau. More and more, we see smaller models being comparable in abilities to larger
Bloom Magazine
Pitch Meeting
What do you imagine when you hear the word “Bloom?” Is it a flower sprouting from the earth? The ad-pocalypse of Bloom supplements on TikTok? Maybe a state of transition or growth, a feeling of empowerment, or that sense of nostalgia for September when you see the first cherry blossom emerge on the trees around Robarts in April?
Place: Date: Friday, September 19th
Time: 5-6pm features@thevarsity.ca 2nd Floor, 21 Sussex
Whatever you see, we invite you to share it with us at The Varsity’s Magazine Pitch Meeting and pitch articles, poetry, prose, illustrations, photographs, collages, etc., for Bloom, our Fall Magazine. Or join us through Zoom: Meeting ID: 813 3851 7002 Passcode: Bloom
Send your pitches to
ones. These smaller models are getting ahead by using curated training data and specializing in certain tasks, such as coding. Since they are trained with data for a specific task, they don’t need to be trained on data that is irrelevant to that task, increasing their performance and reliability in the chosen domain.
The traditional ‘bigger is better’ scaling law has therefore wavered, and compute size can no longer be used as the only accurate predictor of performance. So, if smaller models can be as risky as larger models, policies need to start accounting for this paradigm change.
The present hard-coded thresholds of size do not take into account these nuances. Different AI applications also require different sizes of models, but that does not automatically make them any safer than other models: the risks like biases, hallucination, and privacy concerns persist.
Hooker concluded her presentation by saying that AI risks are “hard to predict, especially in the future, and policy should be informed by scientific evidence, and be transparent about what risks [are present.]”
Aakash Anil Varsity Contributor